Memphis Film Festival dusts off Westerns

Stars of TV's horse operas join in salute to cowpokes' heyday

By John Beifuss

Monday, June 1, 2009

In 1978, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings sang, "Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys."

Fortunately for fans of movie and television Westerns, the celebrity guests coming to this year's Memphis Film Festival had been riding tall in the saddle for many, many years before that warning could reach impressionable maternal ears.

Stars of "Wagon Train," "Laramie," "Lawman," "Laredo," "Bronco," "Sugarfoot," "Colt .45," "The Rough Riders," "The Outlaws," "The Virginian," "My Friend Flicka" and "The High Chaparral" will be at this year's festival, which begins Thursday and continues through Saturday, June 6, at the Whispering Woods Hotel and Conference Center in Olive Branch.

That's quite a roundup, but the programs cited above are just a few of the dozens of horse operas that left their hoofprints on network television

schedules from 1949 -- when NBC began broadcasting edited versions of Hopalong Cassidy movies -- until 1975, when "Gunsmoke" was canceled after a 20-year prime-time run that won't be surpassed until "The Simpsons" begins its 21st season in September.

By the time Marshal Matt Dillon rode into the sunset, "Gunsmoke" was the only true Western left on network TV; nowadays, Western series and movies are almost novelties. But for most of the eight decades before "Star Wars" (1977), the cowboy was the iconic hero in American filmed entertainment. (In the peak year of 1959, an astonishing 26 prime time programs were Westerns.)

"There's something so genuine about the Western," said festival guest Will Hutchins, 77, the tenderfoot hero in "Sugarfoot," which ran from 1957 to 1961 on ABC. "I can't even stand watching the coming attractions these days, with all the ridiculous shooting and destruction. In the Westerns, they saved their ammo; they didn't just shoot indiscriminately."

This year's Memphis Film Festival -- billed as "A Gathering of Guns" -- is not just a salute to the classic oater but a return to the event's sagebrush roots.

The fest was founded in 1972 as the Western Film Festival, to bring together fans and performers from the classic cowboy adventures of decades past.

As time passed, the name was changed, and the festival expanded its focus to vintage and classic films and TV series of all types. The event moved from Memphis to Olive Branch in 2005.

This year, organizers decided to again place special emphasis on the Westerns they love best, inviting more than a dozen movie and TV quick draws, including Ty Hardin ("Bronco"), Henry Darrow ("The High Chaparral") and Don Collier ("The Outlaws").

The Whispering Woods hotel is booked solid for this year's festival, "and there's only one explanation for that in my mind," said film fest chairman Ray Nielsen. "It's this combination of guest stars. These names seem to attract fans. And mind you, the Western is a genre that's been written off time and again by the bean counters in Hollywood."

At the festival, the stars participate in panels to discuss their careers, and they meet fans and autograph the stills and posters that are on sale in the convention "dealers' room." They participate in live re-creations of classic radio scripts; and sometimes they stop by one of the three screening rooms where fans can watch their old movies and TV episodes.

"Our Westerns depicted true heroes," said festival guest Robert Fuller, 75, star of "Laramie" (1959-63) and six seasons of the classic "Wagon Train" (1957-65), not to mention the medical drama "Emergency!" (1972-77).

"A young child watching this is going to learn something -- essentially, right from wrong," said Fuller, who is something of a cowboy himself, having moved to a ranch in Texas in 2004 after retiring from show business. ("I wanted to get the hell out of that town where Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn were living," he said.)

"There's moral values," Fuller said. "Cowboys were moral. He knew how to treat a woman, he knew how to take his hat off. I don't give a dadgum how old he is, he still says 'Yes, ma'am' and 'No, sir.' "

Most of the people who attend the film festival grew up watching horse operas, but sometimes kids did more than just watch. John Washbrook -- or Johnny Washbrook, as he was billed at the time -- was only 10 years old when he was cast opposite an Arabian sorrel mare in "My Friend Flicka," a 1956-58 series that qualifies as a Western because of its late 19th century Wyoming ranch setting.

Three horses played Flicka on camera, but two were trick horses, while the third -- actually called Flicka -- was the primary equine "actor." "I just loved her tremendously," Washbrook, 64, said of his main (or should that be mane?) co-star. "I often would feel like I only had to think what I wanted to do, and the horse would sense it, she was so well-trained and responsive."

Washbrook -- now a Martha's Vineyard bank officer, and a man who has never before been to a film or nostalgia festival -- said the series' writers also were impressed by Flicka. "It seemed like they would get caught up with how sensitive and brilliant the horse was, and they would write it into the script -- 'Flicka looks at Ken puzzledly,' as if the horse could read and act out those emotions."

Festival guest Denny Miller, a former UCLA basketball star (and teammate of Denny Crum), was the star of the much-reviled low-budget 1959 version of "Tarzan the Ape Man," a role he spoofed when he was cast as "Tongo the Ape Man" in an episode of "Gilligan's Island" titled "Our Vines Have Tender Apes." In 1961, Miller traded his loincloth for chaps, appearing on three seasons of "Wagon Train."

Miller, 75, said the popularity of the Western is connected to America's origins, "the idea of manifest destiny and wide open spaces -- the frontier that's there to conquer."

This idea still appeals to people, said Miller, who theorizes that the Western hasn't bit the dust but lives on in high-tech disguise.

"Now, the cowboys wear helmets and the frontier's straight up," Miller said. "The cowboys are astronauts."

For a complete list of guests and much more information about the festival, visit memphisfilmfestival.com.

Memphis Film Festival

Who: Robert Fuller ("Wagon Train"), James Drury ("The Virginian") and Anne Helm ("Follow That Dream"), to name just a few of the celebrity guests.

Highlights: Celebrity panels; re-creations of live radio programs; a dealers' room offering movie memorabilia; three viewing rooms offering nonstop movies and TV episodes; a June 6 banquet.

Where: The Whispering Woods Hotel and Conference Center, 11200 E. Goodman Road in Olive Branch.

When: Thursday through Saturday, June 6.

Registration: $60 per person or $65 per couple for the three days, or $20 per person and $25 per couple daily.

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394